Offender Profiling Series
Profiling
Property Crimes
Edited by David Canter & Laurence Alison (2000)
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Property Crimes
Profiling Property Crimes
Aline Labato
Criminal Weapon Use in Brazil: A Psychological
Analysis
This study sought to find a link between the meaning
of the weapon, offending behaviour, and offenders' personality characteristics.
The study was based on responses to 120 questionnaires completed by offenders
in three prisons in Northeast Brazil. The data was analysed using Smallest
Space Analysis (SSA).
The results indicated that both offending behaviour and offenders' personality
characteristics were expressed by the role the offenders assigned to the
weapon they used. The weapon was an object that had meaning for the criminal
and the criminal's attitude towards this object reflected aspects of their
general characteristics. The findings suggest that offenders will differ
in the way they interpret the meaning of their weapons. This helps to
distinguish them and consequently to identify them.
The present investigation concludes that to ignore the meaning of the
weapon for a criminal and the weapon's role at the scene of the crime
is to ignore an important factor, which may help to access an offender's
characteristics.
Aline Lobato graduated
in Clinical Psychology from the State University of Paraiba, N.E. Brazil.
She was appointed a lecturer in psychology at the Lutheran University
of Brazil in Manaus where she was also a clinical psychologist at the
Military College. She has undertaken research on Brazilian criminal behaviour
particularly on the psychological meaning of the criminal's weapon, collecting
her data from various prisons in the Northeast of the country. She has
a Masters Degree in Investigative Psychology from the University of Liverpool
where she is currently developing her research into Brazilian criminal
behaviour as part of her PhD studies.
